


The ruin of my house

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:04:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victarion confronts his remaining elder brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The ruin of my house

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> This fic takes place after the events that are laid out at the end of ADWD.
> 
> I have taken some liberties with the canonical events in and beyond ADWD. Instead of going North to return Lady Glover to Deepwood Motte, Asha hides out in Ten Towers to see what Euron is plotting, and returns after the majority of the conflict between the Greyjoy brothers plays out. This is mostly because I couldn't figure out how to get her out of Stannis' camp without a huge Ironborn-Baratheon battle that would have thrown the story off kilter.
> 
> The fic's title comes from Richard III (II, iv).

They found the Damphair on the shores of Great Wyk. He looked much the same as the last time that Victarion had seen him, clad in his salt-stained robes, his hair tangled with seaweed, but there was an emptiness in his sharp blue eyes, a fearfulness in his features, so different from his typical hard gaze and deep conviction. Victarion was not surprised that Aeron had taken refuge there; after all, it was as far as he could get from Pyke without arousing any notice, and ever since Euron had claimed the Seastone Chair, his younger brother had attempted, assumedly for his own safety, to disappear. It had been Aeron who had called for a kingsmoot in the first place, and he likely blamed himself for its outcome. 

They did not speak at first. Victarion had taken a knee in front of Aeron, bowing his head as he took the blessing, the saltwater trickling down his sunburned face like a salve. He had been too long in the east, and although the warmer breezes and bluer waters had first seemed more welcoming than the storms and gray-green sea that surrounded the Iron Islands, it had been nothing more than an illusion. A mummer’s farce. 

Just as his voyage had been, in the end. 

The water cleansed him. However, it did not wash away the rage that had been building up in his chest since he had arrived in Meereen to find the silver-haired queen gone. In the end, it had just been another of Euron’s tricks that amused no one save himself, and Victarion had found himself the butt of such jokes far too many times for his own liking. He had wondered how it had benefitted Euron to send him east for nothing, but reasoned that the fruitless pursuit of a woman who likely did not even exist, and the thought of Victarion’s own frustration, was enough to bring a smile to his elder brother’s face. 

Aeron’s hands shook slightly as he refilled his skin with seawater, tying the leather pouch to his belt. 

“You have returned.” He did not smile; perhaps he could not considering their circumstances. Euron’s mad laughter would serve enough for both of them. “I have heard rumors of dragons, Brother,” Aeron said in his deep voice, “dragons and women who ride astride their backs.”

“They are stories. Stories told by old women by the fire at night, and and only fit for fools.” The words, along with the knowledge that his journey to Slaver’s Bay had been nothing but a jape, were bitter to Victarion. “But you have seen all of this in your visions, I am sure.”

Aeron shook his head. His hands, still slightly trembling, grasped his ragged robes tightly. “I have heard nothing from our god. Only silence, and the storm on the horizon.” He sighed deeply. “It is a fearsome thing, to be parted so from one’s god. He has not answered me since-” But he was unable to finish. 

“Since the kingsmoot,” Victarion said. 

“Since Euron,” Aeron said simply. The name was enough. “It is the Storm God, I have felt it since that day, filling the people with lies, confusing their minds with worthless shining trinkets. They forget who they are.”

“You think that he speaks through our brother?” Victarion was no stranger to foreign gods, remembering the counsel that he had kept with Moqorro on his voyage, the tributes paid to the Fire God out of desperation. It was no better than Euron’s fraternization with the eastern wizards and the other creatures that he’d brought back from his journeys, and Victarion’s guilt at his own betrayal stung. 

His arm twinged. Victarion wished to remove the gauntlets that he wore, to bathe it in the waters. Although he no longer felt the pain of the injury caused by Serry’s blade, whatever the Red Priest had done to it at sea caused it to burn incessantly, and although it did not affect the leather that concealed it, it was a never-ending source of irritation for him. Perhaps now that he was home, the seas would heal him, would purge the witchcraft of false gods from him. Although Victarion had done his share of sacrifices to R’hllor while at sea, now that he had returned to the sacred waters of the Iron Islands, such actions seemed ridiculous. Blasphemous, as well, of course. And he would atone for such idolatry in good time. But in the meantime, he wished to avoid the censure that would certainly come from Aeron’s lips. Although not as powerful in body as Victarion, Aeron’s faith was the strongest, and beside it, Victarion, although devout, was nothing more than a beardless boy. 

“He sits the Seastone Chair now,” Aeron said, his voice resonant over the waves that lapped the edge of the beach. “He defiles it.” 

Victarion nodded. “And we must bear it,” he said, head lowered. “We must not share in his abominations. After all, cursed is the kinslayer.” He remembered how close he had come, years hence, how his hands had so easily encircled Euron’s neck, hands covered in his wife’s drying blood, and how Euron had laughed at his rage, his blue lips parting almost sensually. It had taken ten men to pull them apart, one of them Balon, his harsh commands cutting through the din of the great hall, mingling with Euron’s vulgar amusement that had twisted into a hoarse bray. They had bound him in chains while Euron prepared for exile, and it was not until the Silence had departed for cursed places unknown that Victarion had been released. 

Yes, he had come close once, and although he had offered countless prayers to the Drowned God since then, had dedicated many a good death to his honor, he had never quite atoned for that, had never really forgotten, or forgiven himself, for the satisfaction that he had felt as he strangled his brother.

“But how long may we endure?” Aeron said, and his words echoed like a condemnation on the otherwise empty beach. “He brings his false gods and his dark ways, and we suffer it.” He looked at Victarion, and his eyes were those of a desperate man. “There is only silence left to me now. But what of you?” 

Victarion straightened his shoulders. “I will go to Pyke. He has summoned me from every port.” 

Aeron made a shaking motion in front of him with his hand. “May our god go with you, brother,” he said. “May he come back to us.” 

*

“Balon was a fool,” Euron said, his lips twisted in a mocking smile. “He may have been my brother, he may have been king, but he did not look beyond the end of his driftwood crown.” He removed the diadem, allowing it to clatter to the floor. It lay amid the rushes, stained with the remnants of feasting, wine and blood and piss, sinking into the half-dried mess. Euron reclined in his chair then, as though it were a bed. 

“Balon was a king,” Victarion said. Although his voice did not betray the wrath that had risen up at his brother’s behavior, he felt his chest tighten and his fists clench painfully with an anger that he had not felt since the day that his wife had died. “Balon was faithful to our god, and to the Old Ways.”

Euron laughed. “The Old Ways are dead,” he scoffed, kicking the crown aside, where it was further concealed under the scattered rushes and debris. “There are only _my_ ways, dear brother.” He grinned, although it did not reach his smiling eye, which was cold, cold as the Shivering Sea, cold as steel, cold as death. “You should be glad that I allowed you to live, after you failed me,” he continued, almost as an afterthought. 

“The Dragon Queen was gone,” Victarion replied through clenched teeth, remembering his frustration at the discovery. The Iron Fleet lay half in ruins now, its debris trailing from Pyke to Slavers Bay, and its men, faithful to Victarion, scattered as easily as driftwood. “But you might have known that.”

Euron shook his head, the picture of innocence. “All I know is what my dear brother has told me,” he said, and Victarion knew it to be a lie. He sighed then, waving his hand in dismissal. “Leave me. I’ve work to do, now that I’ve been crowned.” But Victarion knew that his elder brother would not concern himself with the government of the Iron Islands. There was a wench, or more likely, wenches, in his bed, that required his immediate attention.

A realization nagged at Victarion as Euron stood up to leave. “Where is Asha?” he asked then. She had not been present at the feasting that his arrival had interrupted earlier, nor had Aeron mentioned her. He wondered if Euron had sent her on a fool’s errand of her own.

“Balon’s daughter?” Euron raised an eyebrow, his face twisting with mirth, as he paused to lean against the throne’s rough back. “She could be at the bottom of the sea for all I know, or care. My dear niece has been missing since my kingsmoot. Perhaps she has gone north to return her pinecones and acorns and bend the knee to the greenlanders.” 

Victarion could not believe this of Asha. She was a woman, and far too willing to compromise and play the lords’ games that were beneath Ironborn custom, but Balon’s blood still flowed in her veins. 

“She and her brother, more wolf than kraken,” Euron smirked. “A pity though,” he said, chuckling, “that she missed her wedding. I might have taken her to wife myself, but Erik Ironmaker deserved some sort of consolation after his poor showing on Nagga’s Hill.”

_Wed?_ Victarion thought. _Another of Euron’s japes._ Erik Ironmaker was an old man whose time was done. Asha would not have stood for that, more a nursemaid than a rockwife. Nor would she have been Euron’s willing bride, although the thought of her axe buried deep in his elder brother’s belly pleased Victarion, and he smiled grimly to think upon it. He started when Euron approached him, laying a hot hand on his shoulder. 

“Rest yourself, brother,” Euron said, leaning close. It was intimate, overly so, and Victarion resisted the urge to pull away. He would not give Euron further amusement at his expense. “You have had a long journey, and we have much to discuss. But later.” He walked out, leaving Victarion alone.

Victarion watched him go, then plucked the crown from the ruins on the floor, and set it reverently in a sconce before he departed. 

*

He was summoned to the great hall a few days later by one of Euron’s creatures. The young boy did not speak the common tongue, yet his urgent gestures were enough to convey his message. Victarion recognized him as one of the bastards that Euron had fathered in places unknown. 

_Sending his by-blow to fetch me_ , he thought. He followed with a scowl, clandestinely fingering the daggers that were concealed by his jerkin. Although he would not bear arms against his king, he did not trust his brother father than the length of his own nose.

The Great Keep was full of hangers-on, tongueless thralls from the Silence’s crew, Euron’s saltwife concubines, and the Ironborn who he had bought with easy promises and shallow dreams of glory. Victarion felt nothing but contempt and disgust for the gathering, but it was slight compared to the horror that he felt when he beheld the crabbed figure on the floor, hands and feet bound tightly, gag thrust in his mouth, eyes in a thin bearded face blazing with anger and pain. 

“Brother,” Euron said with a grin. “You have come. Now we’re all together at last.”

“Release him,” Victarion barked. He moved to free Aeron from the ropes that held him, but Euron raised a hand. Lucas Codd and some of his cousins moved in, and bore Aeron’s body aloft, carrying him to the window. Victarion looked toward them. There were many and he was only armed with the small daggers that he’d taken off a Pentoshi trader long ago. If he had brought his axe, it might have served, but it was far too late for that. He looked at Euron, who sat aloft the Seastone Chair, watching with amusement as if it were nothing more than a mummer’s show and he some greenlander lord holding court. 

“Take him to the window.”

Victarion watched in horror as the men obeyed, resting Aeron’s body on the narrow ledge. Leagues below lay the sea and he certainly would not survive such a drop. Although his brother could not speak, Victarion could see the fear and rage commingled in his eyes, and he twisted his head back and forth in an attempt to free himself of the gag.

There was only one way to stop it.

Victarion leapt to the dais where his brother sat. “Release him, I said,” he shouted, but Euron merely laughed. “Brother,” he said, “lest you forget, I take orders from no man. I am the one who they crowned.” He gestured to his audience, who seemed split between watching in horror and fascination, and shouting insults. “Aeron has been accused of a great crime.” He watched as Aeron’s struggles intensified, although they were in the end, useless. 

“Aeron Greyjoy is the godliest man on the Iron Islands,” Victarion said. “No one has done more to serve our god, or to honor our ways. What crime could he have possibly committed?”

Euron laughed mockingly at this too, but at close range, Victarion could see that his blue eye gleamed like ice. There was no mirth here, only cruelty and madness. 

“Treason,” he said coldly. “Questioning the kingsmoot. Going about the farthest reaches of the islands, inciting my people against me, their rightful master.” He noticed Victarion fidgeting with his gloves, and shook his head chidingly. “Searching for a poisoned blade, Brother? Such subterfuge is beneath you. Or perhaps, beyond you.” He paused, now all courtesy. “But I might be willing to make an exchange. A treason is a betrayal, after all, and Aeron is not the only one who has failed me.” He stood, his hands encircling Victarion’s wrists. “Instead of a bride, you brought me excuses,” he whispered, leaning intimately close. “Instead of dragons, failure. Do as I say, and I’ll spare our baby brother.” 

Victarion followed him to the large window, still toying with the leather gauntlets. He had not wanted Aeron to see the magic that Moqorro had wrought, but it seemed as if there were no other choice. Euron had to be stopped, and Victarion did not believe in his promises. 

“What would you have me do?” he growled, as he watched his brother and noted the fear in Aeron’s eyes as Euron approached.

“Bow to me,” Euron said. “Bow to your king, Victarion.”

_This man is no king_ , Victarion thought. _He is a curse, an abomination in the eyes of the Drowned God. Balon was a king._

But he would have Aeron live. His dignity was but a small price to pay for his brother’s life, and they could still work out a plan. Euron could still be overthrown.

So he lowered himself to the floor, hearing the laughter rise around him. His gaze met Euron’s boots, and he gritted his teeth until given the order to rise. But he moved without permission when the amusement in the hall turned to shock, and gasps and shouts filling the air. He rose quickly and gaped in horror. 

The window ledge was empty. 

Aeron, like his eldest brother before him, was gone. 

Euron’s shoulders shook, and an ugly sound escaped his lips. “I suppose,” he choked, shaking his head, “I have finally learned that men are incapable of flight. Now _dragons_ …but I have no dragons, dear Brother!”

“Kinslayer!” Victarion roared, tearing the gauntlets off, revealing his burning arm. He leapt toward Euron, encircling the man’s throat with his hands for the second time, only now no one remained who could stop him. His left arm was burning, throbbing like the rage that pulsed through his body and raced through his heart, and he throttled Euron for all he was worth, banging his head against the stone wall, shoving him to the floor, and straddling his body.

“You dare call _me_ kinslayer?” Euron gasped, although the words were near unintelligible. Victarion did not loosen his grip. He had heard enough for a lifetime, and tightened his hands, watching as the blood reddened Euron’s eyes, and as his face took on a shade of blue to rival that of his cruel, scornful mouth. His hands began to ache, but he held on, squeezing the life out of his brother, the man who had made mock of him time and again, the man who had had his wife, who had defiled all prescriptions from their god, the man who had murdered Balon, Aeron, and how many other faithful Ironborn who would not accept his twisted rule.

The spectators stood silently, watching the sight of their king dethroned, unable to make out more than an incandescent red glow that surrounded the figures on the floor. Men cried out in pain and shaded their eyes from the brightness, which seemed impossible to bear. All they could do was listen to the sound of a man’s life being strangled out of him, and the harsh breathing of his assailant. Afterwards, they knew little of what had happened, save that their king was dead, and Victarion was gone.

*

It burned so, and in his madness he could only flee, knowing as he did so that he made a mockery of everything that he had been, a warrior turned craven, turned kinslayer. He had broken both the laws of his god and his people, and Victarion saw nothing in his flight save a smoldering rage before his eyes, and beyond that, blackness. When he finally fell exhausted on the sands of the distant shores of Great Wyk, he had fragmentary memories of dark things, of laugher from blue lips and the smell of charred flesh, of a rickety craft that he’d seized after letting more blood which spilled on the deck and stained it as red as that of the Silence, of the great agony throbbing through the left side of his body when he’d fumbled with a knife, severing flesh from bone and bone from itself, and casting the smoking limb as far into the sea as he had the strength, of a god with many limbs rising from the waves before him, his eyes as cold and disapproving as Balon’s had been, his breath blowing the fragile vessel north in choppy seas. And then, nothing.

*

He walked along the beach, wearing the remnants of a jerkin and breeches, the tattered golden arms of the kraken on his cloak, now salt-stained and wind-torn, blowing about his calves as he climbed to the top of the hill. Looking out to sea, Victarion stood in the wind that came down from the north. His skin was all gooseflesh but he did not mind the cold. He had become accustomed to it, as Aeron had.

_Perhaps_ , he thought, _I am meant to take up his ways._. His hair and beard had grown long and tangled, seaweed woven in both, but he still retained his hulking build, despite the deprivation that he had subjected himself to. Victarion swam in the waters, allowing the waves to pound over him as Aeron had done, and he prayed constantly that the Drowned God would see fit to wash the sin from his soul in this way. Just as he had done for Aeron. The stump where his arm had been had healed from the salt, and although he sometimes felt phantom pains and itches, especially late at night, he was more whole than he’d been in a year. The wound had somehow cauterized after he’d freed himself of the arm in his madness, perhaps a remnant of Moqorro’s witchcraft. Perhaps a blessing, perhaps a curse.

Victarion listened to the sound of the waves as they crashed against the shore. The skies were clear today, the sun breaking through the clouds, light dancing on the water like ships, and he thought of his beloved broken fleet, and how the steel and iron he once bore had shined so in battle. There was nothing here save his memories of a better time, and the presence of the sea filling his senses. No dark clouds besmirched the horizon, and the wind had been steady and clear all day. 

The Storm God, and the Fire God, R’hllor, were gone. Euron was gone. 

But He Who Dwells Beneath the Waves was silent as well. Victarion could certainly feel his presence, just at the edge of things, the calm after a violent squall, but there was no voice welling up within him, as it had been with Aeron. No one to tell him what to do, where to go. Aeron had heard their god, Victarion believed with all conviction, but as for himself, he had felt nothing more than a strong presence behind him in battle, filling his sails with favorable winds, guiding his hands as they wielded his weaponry, an armor greater and truer than any mail or plate. 

He noted a glint of something below on the beach, and made his way carefully down the slope. When he reached the point where the waters met the shore, he saw a rusted axe, the handle half broken away, lying in the sand. Victarion fell to his knees to examine it. He could not tell how long it had been at sea, but it was badly corroded, the blade dull, and the kraken that had once decorated the head a faint outline. He picked it up in his remaining hand. It was surprisingly light, and the grip was all but gone, but the feel was familiar, pleasurable even. He turned it one way, then the other, almost unconsciously going through the motions that had spilt greenlander blood on decks from Pyke to Essos. 

It was not the hand of the priest or penitent that gripped the old axe. It was the hand of a warrior.

“You have spoken to me,” he said, leaning to brush the shore with his lips, feeling the cold water surge against his brow. “I will do as you say. I will return.”

*

“Will you stay?” Asha grinned in that mocking way that he was so accustomed to, but her eyes were serious. “My nuncles have diminished. It is just you and uncle Rodrik now.” 

Victarion could not find joy in that. Aeron had been a godly man, despite his youthful transgressions, and had not deserved the bad death that Euron had meted out to him. Euron was another matter, but Victarion would not think on him. He was gone, and the sin of his death would weigh heavily on Victarion’s soul for the rest of his life. But the alternative had been far worse to contemplate. Sacrifices were necessary. He had made them many times, in many different ways. Perhaps it was the will of their god that it be so. 

“I will need a strong commander for my fleet,” she said then, turning towards the harbor. They stood on the wall of the keep, and had a fine view of the harbor, where many Ironborn and thralls labored below, repairing and building longships to replace what had been torn asunder. It had been Asha’s first order when she returned from hiding, finding all in utter disarray. “And my father always trusted you.” Her voice was grave. “He told me that no one save Victarion Greyjoy loved his ships enough to serve.”

It had been true, Victarion reflected. He had taken such pride in the vessels, could still name them all, even those that had been scuttled on the fruitless trip east. And in time, he might know them all again. 

Asha did not drop her gaze. Although she was far from the powerful figure that her father had cut, her eyes had that same sharp expression, that same mixture of fearlessness and desperation that he had seen time and again in Balon’s face. She cut a strong presence, just as he had, long ago. 

“You mean to rule then?” Victarion said. “They will never accept you. Theon, perhaps, but you-” He remembered Aeron’s doubt at Asha’s claim. The boy was a fool, too long on shore, but if he could be found…

“ _Theon_ is not here,” Asha said, and her voice was hard. Their efforts to find Balon’s only remaining child had been fruitless, but she still sent raiding parties north, in the hopes that he would be recovered soon. Winterfell lay in ashes now, and there were whispers about flayed men, but nothing certain had reached Pyke. “And so, there are two krakens,” she said, turning to Victarion. “Will it be you or me, nuncle?” She placed her hand on his arm, gripping it tightly. 

“I am not fit to rule,” Victarion said, finally. “Euron—”

“Is dead,” Asha said, “and the Drowned God was perhaps merciful in that. Our people need someone, uncle.”

“I am only fit for battle.”

“So be my right hand,” she said. “Be my eyes and ears in the world beyond our islands. Wield your axe and sail my fleet. Have faith in me, like you trusted in Father.” 

Victarion could see Balon in the girl, in her bearing and in her confidence. She would need guidance in the Old Ways, someone who she could trust, someone of her blood. He fingered the battered old axe that he wore at his waist. It had come a long way from the shores of Great Wyk, and although he would not wield it in service to the islands, he would bear it nonetheless. 

He waited for a sign from their god but heard nothing. He could hear the faint sounds of labor below, hammers and chisels shaping wood, old songs of battle sung in rhythm to their work, the sound of the gulls above, and the sea below lapping against the land and the cluster of towers that formed the holdfast. Perhaps all of that was enough, though.


End file.
